Military service is compulsory for all adult males among the Santa Cruz, though many avoid such service by payment to the chief of a certain sum in money or its equivalent. Small garrisons were kept up at Santa Cruz, Chan Santa Cruz, Bacalar, and other Indian towns where soldiers were permanently stationed. No uniform was provided, though many of the men were armed with Winchester rifles. They were provided also with a ration of corn and beans, and often took their wives along with them as cooks. DISEASES AND MEDICINES Indian men and women of all ages and classes, when attacked by any serious malady, are found to be lacking in vitality and stamina; they relinquish hope, and relax their grip on life very easily, seeming to hold it lightly and as not worth a fight to retain. An elderly man or woman will sometimes take to the hammock without apparent physical symptoms of disease beyond the anemia and splenitis from which nearly all suffer, and merely announce _Ile in cimli_, "I am going to die." They refuse to eat, drink, or talk, wrap themselves in a sheet from head to foot, and finally do succumb in a very short time apparently from sheer lack of vitality and absence of desire to continue living. Malaria is without doubt the chief scourge of the Indian's existence. Many of the villages are built in low-lying situations, with mosquito-breeding swamps all round them, while the scrubby bush and rank vegetation are allowed to grow in the yards right up to the houses, furnishing good cover and an excellent lurking place for the insects; moreover, the Indians seldom use mosquito curtains, as they seem to have acquired a sort of immunity to the irritation caused at night by the noise and biting of the pests. Practically all Indians suffer from malaria, which is the main cause of the splenic enlargement and anemia so prevalent among them. In some cases the spleen reaches an enormous size, nearly filling the abdominal cavity, and deaths from a slight blow or fall, causing rupture of this organ, are by no means uncommon. Malaria is usually treated by means of profuse sweating (_kilcabankil_), the patient lying wrapped in a cotton sheet in the hammock, with a fire burning beneath and drinking sudorific bush medicine. This in itself is an excellent remedy, but in the midst of the sweat patients frequently plunge into cold water, thus becoming thoroughly chilled, a procedure very apt to bring on pneumonia, to which they are peculiarly subject. The splenic enlargement is treated by applying a number of small circular blisters (_xacal_) containing chichem juice to the skin, over the affected organ, which seem to be remarkably efficacious in reducing the swelling.